SARA 312 Tier II Reporting: Thresholds, Deadlines, and Penalties

SARA Tier II reporting requirements apply to any facility that stores a hazardous chemical at or above a federal threshold quantity at any point in the calendar year and is already required to keep a Safety Data Sheet for that chemical under OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard. If both conditions are met, you file an annual Tier II inventory form by March 1, covering the prior year, with three recipients: your State Emergency Response Commission, your Local Emergency Planning Committee, and the fire department with jurisdiction over your site.¹² The law behind it is Section 312 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 11022.

Who Has to File

Two conditions have to overlap. Your facility must be required to maintain Safety Data Sheets under 29 CFR 1910.1200, and you must have a hazardous chemical on-site at or above the federal reporting threshold at some point during the calendar year.¹ That pulls in manufacturers, fuel distributors, auto body shops, agricultural suppliers, warehouses, and many other businesses that most people don’t associate with chemical reporting.

“Facility” is defined broadly. It covers all buildings, equipment, structures, and stationary items on a single site, or on connected sites owned or operated by the same entity.³ A storage shed behind the shop counts. A warehouse across the parking lot counts if you own or operate both. Missing secondary structures is a common reason facilities under-report.

A lease does not shift the obligation off the property owner. The EPA has stated that private contracts cannot exempt either the owner or the operator from Tier II reporting.⁴ Where only one party maintains the Safety Data Sheets under OSHA, that party carries the primary reporting duty, but the EPA can pursue either the landlord or the tenant. Get the arrangement in writing, and don’t assume the lease clause protects you.

The Thresholds That Trigger a Filing

Chemicals fall into two groups with different cutoffs.

Extremely Hazardous Substances, listed in 40 CFR Part 355, are reportable at 500 pounds or the substance’s Threshold Planning Quantity, whichever is lower. Some EHS chemicals have planning quantities well under 500 pounds, so check each substance individually. For an EHS in solid form that doesn’t pose a particle or dissolution risk, the planning quantity may default to 10,000 pounds under 40 CFR 355.15(b), but the 500-pound Tier II threshold still applies when it’s the lower number.⁵

Every other hazardous chemical for which OSHA requires a Safety Data Sheet becomes reportable at 10,000 pounds.⁶

The test looks at the peak quantity present at any single moment during the year, not an annual average. A facility that normally stores 8,000 pounds of a non-EHS chemical but takes a delivery pushing it to 11,000 pounds for three days has crossed the threshold and owes a report. Chemicals that fluctuate near a cutoff need daily inventory tracking.

For mixtures, you can report the whole mixture as one item or break out each hazardous component by weight. Pick one method and use it consistently. Lead-acid batteries are the classic example: the sulfuric acid inside is an EHS, and if the total across all batteries and other sources on your site reaches 500 pounds, that acid has to be reported.

Retail gas stations get a partial break. Gasoline stored entirely in fully compliant underground tanks isn’t reportable until it exceeds 75,000 gallons; diesel gets 100,000 gallons on the same terms. If any of the fuel sits in above-ground tanks or the underground tanks aren’t in full UST compliance, the standard 10,000-pound threshold applies.

Chemicals That Don’t Count

EPCRA Section 311(e) excludes several categories, and the same exemptions apply to Tier II reporting under Section 312:⁷

Food, drugs, cosmetics, and food or color additives regulated by the FDA.
Chemicals locked into a manufactured item where no exposure occurs under normal use.
Substances used for personal, family, or household purposes, or present in the same form and concentration as a consumer-packaged product.
Substances used under the direct supervision of a technically qualified individual in a laboratory or medical facility.
Substances used in routine agricultural operations, and fertilizer held by a retailer for sale to the end user.

What Goes on the Tier II Form

The form collects two blocks of information: facility identifiers and per-chemical data.

Facility Information

You provide the full street address, latitude and longitude, North American Industry Classification System code, and Dun & Bradstreet number.⁸ Coordinates matter because responders use them to locate the site during an incident. You also list an emergency contact reachable around the clock.

Chemical Information

For each chemical at or above threshold, the statute requires:⁹

Chemical name or common name from the Safety Data Sheet, with its Chemical Abstracts Service registry number.
Maximum amount on-site during the year, in standardized range codes.
Average daily amount on-site during the year, also in range codes.
Storage description: container types, pressure, and temperature.
Storage location on the property. You may request that the precise location be withheld from public disclosure while still providing it to emergency planners.

Each chemical also gets classified by physical and health hazards. Physical categories include flammables, explosives, gases under pressure, oxidizers, and materials corrosive to metal. Health categories cover acute toxicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity, skin and eye irritation, and respiratory sensitization.¹⁰ These categories track OSHA’s Globally Harmonized System, so the Safety Data Sheet should already identify them.

March 1 Deadline and Where to Send It

Tier II reports are due by March 1 each year for the previous calendar year’s inventory.² Three recipients: the State Emergency Response Commission, the Local Emergency Planning Committee for your area, and the fire department with jurisdiction over your facility.⁶

Most states require electronic filing through the EPA’s Tier2 Submit software, a state portal, or a third-party system like E-Plan. Check your state’s requirements before your first filing, because states can add rules on top of the federal baseline. A handful charge a small per-facility or per-chemical fee.

The Section 311 Filing You Can’t Forget

Section 312’s annual form has a companion under Section 311. You must submit Safety Data Sheets, or a list of hazardous chemicals grouped by hazard category, to the same three recipients that get your Tier II.¹¹ Section 311 is a one-time filing.¹² A new facility submits within three months of becoming subject to OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard, and after that only updates when something significant changes, such as a new chemical arriving on-site or a shift in hazard classification. Section 311 tells responders what you have. Section 312 tells them how much and where.

Penalties for Missing or Botching a Filing

The base statutory penalty is up to $25,000 per violation per day.¹³ After federally required inflation adjustments, the ceiling reached $71,545 per violation per day as of the EPA’s January 2025 adjustment.¹⁴ Each day of continued noncompliance counts as a separate violation.

Knowing and willful violations can bring criminal prosecution, with up to two years of imprisonment and fines, and up to five years for a second conviction. The EPA can also issue administrative compliance orders enforceable in federal district court. Enforcement often targets facilities that overlooked secondary storage areas, seasonal inventory spikes, or chemical forms they didn’t realize were reportable.

Records to Keep After You File

Keep copies of every Tier II submission along with the supporting material: Safety Data Sheets, daily inventory logs, threshold calculations, and correspondence with the receiving agencies. Federal regulations require retention for at least three years. Keeping them longer is smarter, because past filings are the reference for future ones and the defense if an inspector questions historical numbers.

EPA and state inspectors can request these records at any time. Facilities that produce organized calculations and documented methodologies are in a much stronger position to contest penalty assessments than those that can’t show their work.

Public Access and Trade Secret Claims

Tier II data is public. Under EPCRA Section 324, any community member can request a specific facility’s Tier II filing from the State Emergency Response Commission or Local Emergency Planning Committee, and the agency has 45 days to respond.¹⁵ You can ask that the exact on-property location of a chemical be withheld from public release; the identity and quantities still become public.

A specific chemical identity can be withheld from the filing as a trade secret under EPCRA Section 322, but the bar is high. You have to show that the identity hasn’t been publicly disclosed, isn’t required to be disclosed elsewhere, would cause substantial competitive harm if revealed, and can’t be figured out by reverse engineering.¹⁶ Even when the claim is approved, you still report the generic class of the chemical in place of the specific name, and the trade secret protection does not apply to emergency release notifications under Section 304. If it spills, the identity gets disclosed.

1
US EPA. EPCRA Hazardous Chemical Inventory Reporting – General Reporting Guidance
2
United States Postal Service. Management Instruction FM-640-2023-1 – Postal Bulletin 22693 – Environmental Compliance
3
US EPA. Facilities Covered Under EPCRA 304
4
US EPA. Can a Lease Agreement Exempt a Facility Owner From Tier II Reporting?
5
US EPA. Two Threshold Planning Quantities (TPQs)
6
Environmental Protection Agency. EPCRA Sections 311 and 312 – Hazardous Chemical Inventory Reporting
7
eCFR. 40 CFR 370.13 – What Chemicals Are Excluded From EPCRA Sections 311 and 312 Reporting
8
US EPA. Is a Dun and Bradstreet Number Required for EPCRA Tier II?
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 11022 – Emergency and Hazardous Chemical Inventory Forms
10
US EPA. Revised Hazard Categories for EPCRA 311/312 Reporting
11
US EPA. Hazardous Chemical Inventory Reporting
12
US EPA. Is the Section 311 Requirement an Annual or a One-Time Reporting Requirement?
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 11045 – Enforcement
14
GovInfo. Civil Monetary Penalty Inflation Adjustment Rule
15
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPCRA Section 324 – Public Availability of Plan, Data Sheets, Forms, and Follow-up Notices
16
Environmental Protection Agency. EPCRA Section 322 – Trade Secrets